KAMPALA, Oct 26: Six Pakistanis arrested on Sept 22 over alleged links with terrorism were freed on Friday after the government failed to come up with any charges against them.

“I am satisfied that the applicants should be released because even the state has admitted that it has no lawful grounds to keep them in custody,” said Justice Patrick Tabaro who heard a habeus corpus writ filed by the Pakistanis.

“This court has decided that they be released,” he said, prompting the six to hug each other enthusiastically.

“Justice has ultimately prevailed,” said Maqbool Ahmed Malik, the eldest of the Pakistanis.

“You had no fault on yourself but this was a mistaken identity,” he told a policeman who had escorted them to court.

Outside court he said: “It is going to take us ages to clean this blemish on our name. Our case was blown out of proportion,” adding that his group had been in Uganda for four months trying to set up a multimillion dollar business project.